Marketing can combine science with art

There is a classic question: is Marketing art or science?

We can think that marketing is a knowledge of human nature, emotion, even personal value pursuit, from this point of view, it is undoubtedly art, but when substituting Hacker, CMT such people create a marketing miracle, we have to think about the "scientific" marketing.

So, you might as well use a compromise expression: make art in a scientific way.

What is content marketing?

"Content marketing is a marketing way that produces valuable, relevant, and ongoing content to attract the target population, change or enhance the behavior of the target population, and create a business transformation." "---American Content Marketing Association Marketing Cato

For the definition of content marketing, it is believed that 100 experts can have 100 kinds of statements. But above this section of the American Marketing Association (hereinafter referred to as CMI) for the description of content marketing, I think is the most accurate one. CMI and Marketprofs in their joint content marketing report that successful content marketing should have the following characteristics:

1, to the audience as the center, to provide valuable, relevant content.

2, with the target crowd purchase related, specific to a purchase stage ("Buying stages")

3, tell a story, throughout the customer experience process ("Customer groceries")

4, there is a clear act of encouragement to guide the audience's next move

5, according to the channels (micro-BO, micro-letter, blog, etc.) have different forms of adaptation and performance techniques

6, have a clear marketing objectives

7, through the design of a strategy to achieve measurable marketing results

8, to ensure high quality content at the same time, but also efficient and effective production

The use of valuable, continuous and relevant content to solve the user's problems and concerns, not only to bring effective dissemination of content, but also to cultivate the audience on the brand trust and loyalty. Brands can build authority in the user's mind by continuously producing high-value content for the audience.

Think about the content marketing you are now doing for your brand, are these features available?

No hurry, now we are away from success and (n a step) away, first of all you should be like a strategist, do a good job in the early planning of content marketing. The following seven major steps for reference:

Buy a portrait of a crowd

A crowd portrait is the image of a typical customer abstracted from among your many buyers, as you develop these roles, you will have a deeper understanding of who your clients are, the focus of your audience, your consumer preferences, and your goals, so you can learn how to develop your marketing activities better.

Why do we need a crowd portrait?

1, to help you determine what your brand needs, the development of content organization strategy. Cut your content according to the type of crowd portrait, make clear what kind of people the brand is already having enough content to supply, and which people need you to provide more content.

2, it determines the brand content of the tone, style. Different types of audiences like different expressions, with TA (Target audience) style and TA communication is more likely to resonate, the crowd portrait allows you to find the most suitable for TA style.

3, based on the crowd portrait, you will be more purposeful planning content topics. What your audience cares about is often a multidimensional complex problem, and abstract crowd portraits give you a clearer understanding of the audience's core appeal.

How to portray a portrait?

By directly investigating consumers, potential customers, or interviewing people who have direct contact with consumers, such as company sales team, service team, distributors, etc., to fully understand their service customers, thus portraying a complete crowd portrait, the following several dimensions may be you need to focus on:

1, background: The basic information of the target group, including company, position, interest, etc.

2, occupation information: Important job responsibilities and content, to the current job satisfaction and dissatisfaction with the place;

3, information source: The target crowd through which way to obtain the information;

4. Challenges/Pain points: What challenges and problems to face, as well as the responses and emotions expressed in the face of these;

5, Content Media preferences: What type of content, what kind of style will be interested in or to cause interaction;

6, the role of the purchase process: the specific target group on the impact of other people's purchasing decisions;

7, Marketing information: Want to pass directly to the target group of brand information;

If your product serves several different kinds of customers, you also need to portray a number of people portrait, in general, 4-6 image is a more reasonable choice.

When you're going to collect enough consumer information, don't try to throw the data directly into the team. Keep in mind that our users are made up of a bunch of living people, not a bunch of blunt, emotionally-free data. When you show the user more vividly in front of the team, the analysis of the consumer will be more effective. Therefore, as much as possible to streamline information to form one or more human-like images that make the team easier to remember, if you want to achieve these effects, suggest that your description include the following:

1. The responsibility of the target group;

2, Typical day/week/quarter of the regular life;

3, the character of the target crowd;

4. The biggest challenge;

For instance, your company is selling software to solve corporate social marketing problems, then one of your typical customers may be: Emily, social marketing manager, lively and cheerful girl, mainly responsible for the operation and management of brand social media channels, she needs and is responsible for brand promotion, PR, content, And sales colleagues working together, in a typical week, will oversee the company's social media content release and operation, with the internal design team, content editing team, as well as external technology developers, data providers to communicate; The biggest challenge is ...

The crowd portrait, on the one hand is the organic combination of information and data, on the other hand, she is a living character. You are "Pen Ma Liang".

Second, draw the purchase process

The purchase process is based on different industry attributes and there are some differences, here we introduce the APA model proposed by Marketprofs, and the Aisas model proposed by the electric pass.

APA Model Description: Consciousness awareness, purchase purchase, support advocate

The conscious phase is a potential purchaser who needs more detailed information about your product;

The buying phase is the process of building a brand trust that is determined by whether they are happy or comfortable with the purchase of the product;

Advocates, this time consumers are quite familiar with your product, this time need to provide more creative information to consumers.

Aisas Model Description: Pay attention to Attention, interest acquires, search, action actions, sharing Share

The attention stage pays attention to spread and arrives, anyway you must let the audience know you;

Acquires stage, grasp the target crowd pain point, the content wins;

Search stage, so that they fully understand you, you need to do a good job of brand display infrastructure;

Action phase, minimizing the operation cost of prospective customers and avoiding unnecessary loss;

The share phase, which runs through the whole customer groceries stage, can generate sharing behavior at any stage; you should be clear about this and set up a simple participatory sharing mechanism;

The above two models are for reference only, you can adjust according to the brand's own situation. When you have finished drawing the purchase process, you should also understand the fact that consumers do not buy and buy, we also need to continue to communicate and research consumers. Depending on the type of consumer, you can divide them into new (customer), persistent (ongoing customer) and loyal consumers (loyal customer).

New consumers: the need to use content to enliven them and inspire effective interaction. such as online quiz, consumer community communication.

Persistent consumers: When your content starts to please them, you can try to provide more detailed product information, official micro, blog and so on to let them know your products, so that the one-time consumers into a continuous consumer.

Loyal consumers: They will strongly support your brand and bring you new customer flow. In order to strengthen the Word-of-mouth communication behavior of loyal consumers, it is necessary to give loyal consumers more than expected reward.

By drawing the purchase process and layering the consumer, it will help you to develop a content marketing plan more purposefully.

Third, the establishment of brand image

It is important to have a variety of channels to show lasting influence, which requires defining your brand image.

Whether you're posting on social media, blogs, or mass media, the style you write will be the image of your brand, and it needs to be consistent, taking into account the user needs of the content.

We divide the brand image into the following parts, character (friendly, warm, inspiring, playful, authoritative, etc.), intonation (private, humble, honest, direct, scientific, etc.), language (simple, complex, rigorous, professional, etc.), intention (communication, interaction, informing, education, entertainment, sales, etc.)

Determine your image after you need to keep your style consistent, which has two tips:

(1) Maintain a high degree of consistency in content writers ' style. You need to be aware of this issue from the outset and ensure that all authors are effectively organized to ensure consistent style. In the case of obvious differentiation, it should be through regular meeting and communication, recovery and improvement.

(2) Allow more people to participate in the content check: Each day, the content team is sent to the Cross-functional team (PR, sales, and even research and development, etc.) at a fixed time, with the planned release of the content of the social media, blogs and other channels, giving them the opportunity to participate in the content checking process.

For example, the author of STC has many authors who submit articles, different styles are very common things, but because we are engaged in new media work, marketing has a certain experience and work experience, based on such a trust base, usually through some offline activities to enhance communication to a large extent to solve the problem of consistency. In addition, in the STC VI design, we also pay attention to the consistency of the problem, by the special designers grasp all the map and article format, all members participate in the content of the inspection.

Iv. brainstorming within the team

The so-called brainstorming (brain-storming), the first psychiatric term, refers to the insanity of mental patients, and is now turned into unrestricted free association and discussion, aimed at generating new ideas or stimulating innovative ideas.

Here are a few recommended methods:

A. Freelance writing

Prepare a white paper with no dots, a pen you like. Set the timer for your phone for 15 minutes.

At the top of the white paper, write down the questions you want to solve with affirmative sentences, such as "I'm going to make a versatile time machine now." ”

Word out this sentence to deepen the impression of this sentence in your mind. Start ticking, write down anything that appears in your mind, and remember to forget grammar, language, punctuation, spelling, and all the things that are obviously relevant in reality and that are reasonable and unreasonable.

Time to. Read what you have written and the wonderful ideas may be hidden inside.

B. Free speech

If you feel better about your voice, you can try to speak freely. It's the same as the free writing process, and the difference is that you need to prepare a video recording device to record your speech.

The only thing to be reminded of is: do not care about what you say, and follow the natural flow of consciousness.

C, Keyword Association

List keywords related to the problem, "freelance writing" based on keywords.

D, "layman" brainstorming

When you are out of the way, let your friends outside the problem/professional to help you solve, sometimes have unexpected effects.

E, the problem itself brainstorming

Sometimes the solution is not found because you don't find the center of the storm--the key question, if you don't have a clear definition of the problem to be solved, how to solve it. At this point you should have a brainstorming session on the problem itself, identifying and correctly defining the problem you are trying to solve.

V. Choosing the right content carrier

The contents of the carrier can have many kinds, such as video, E-books, information maps, files, reports, sliding pages (H5 or PPT), case studies, blogs and so on. Different carriers will be different people and occasions have a complete difference in the role of the following will be a simple analysis of several carriers.

ebook: One of the most common content marketing tools, especially in the Business-to-business world.

At present, the most commonly used E-book format is epub, can be in the PC or mobile based on the screen, such as automatic adjustment, to achieve paging, illustrations and other functions, the current can produce such electronic book software has Sigil,escape,epubbuilder, Epustar software Sigil: Cross-platform Open source epub Electronic book editor, supporting Windows, Linux, and Mac systems.

Epubbuilder: Powerful epub E-book maker software, imported in a variety of formats. Support Stanza, Sony 505, Adobe de and many other readers.

Epubstar: You can use ready-made Word documents (Word 97/2003/2007/2010) or text-only text documents to automatically generate EPUB-formatted e-books. Its characteristics are simple and easy to learn, one-click conversion, easy to operate.

Information Map (infographics): The use of pictures and text merge to present and simplify complex information, making the content more vivid, marketers generally use this carrier to attract consumers, simplifying information, such as manuals.

A good information map production site, easel can be modular production information map, there is a wealth of material for you to choose to meet the various requirements of beginners, but if you want to reflect their own style will require the designer in the latter part of a number of design adjustments;

Pinterest is a very rich information map platform, which has a wealth of information map of the finished product, style diversity, but also based on keyword search, but unfortunately can not be made on the site.

HTML5: Can be directly on the mobile end, interactive strong, suitable for a variety of scenarios, production costs depending on the display effect, by the mobile end of the interface is more restrictive. Free production of H5 platforms are:

Maka: A rich static and dynamic template style, MAKA2.0 has been on line, to increase data statistics, online payments and other functions, more user-friendly operation, platform stability and security;

Xiu-meter: Support dynamic template, full-featured, rich case detail;

Product interest: Simple operation, suitable for just try H5 students;

Video: To achieve a variety of functions, improve brand awareness, answer questions, demonstration notes. But the cost is high, the cycle is longer, need to use with other carrier mutually, play maximum utility.

Novice players can use the Windows System movie Maker,ios system can be used imovie, in short, your material (Pictures and video) do a certain stitching, plus some filter effect, with appropriate music, does not involve editing and other burning brain labor;

Ordinary players can use pathologist, simple operation, suitable for the daily use of the family, can provide a complete film editing process solutions, from shooting to sharing can be achieved;

The hardcore player can use Adobe's Premium, provides a complete set of processes for capturing, editing, toning, beautifying audio, subtitle additions, output, DVD burning, and efficient integration with other Adobe software to fulfill all the challenges of editing, production, workflow, and quality products.

Blog: is a good platform to display the brand, but to maintain a blog and other carriers exist a certain difference, you need to take into account the consistency of the brand style.

Case study: In general, the most persuasive stories come from your newest consumers, and while case studies are traditional content media, this does not mean that we should ignore their role. The best case study is not about the product, but about the value of your brand.

Vi. content "Recipes"

Every day we push a lot of content to the user, but have you considered whether the consumer will accept the content, or ignore it, or angrily reject it? Therefore, it is very important that how to better match your content and present it to the users in a more receptive way. If we can imagine the content as a feast, then what do we present to the user as a recipe?

Breakfast: We have breakfast every day, in the content marketing breakfast, refers to those who are pushed to the consumer every day, this part of the content must ensure simple, easy to digest, style consistent, the purpose is to keep consumers alive.

Staple food: This part of the content to convey the value proposition of the brand, should occupy a large share of your content, you must spend most of your energy on this, and the main marketing channels to promote and promote. In the case of STC, the headlines and the offline sharing salon are the staple foods for STC fans, and the preparation and planning of this section will occupy nearly 70% of the STC management team's time and effort to feed.

Vegetables: Vegetables are to make the diet more nutritious and healthy, from time to time to push the value of the user, rich in vitamins content, these content is not often output, but is very valuable to the consumer content. such as industry reports, business insights, etc., are also essential.

Dessert: The presence of desserts will make your marketing recipes more humane and will attract more "cargo" to your brand and enjoy a variety of desserts.

Seasoning: Imagine how boring our dishes would be without oil and salt vinegar. Content marketing also needs a similar condiment, you can set up with the brand-related challenges, controversial topics such as to stimulate the audience's taste buds, so as to enhance the interest of users, your content reading and forwarding rate of the increase is also a matter of the foreseeable.

Vii. content push time planning table

Time Planner doesn't need to be cool, can be a shared form, or simply written on the blackboard, it is important that this calendar gives you a visual angle, so that you can check the direction of the content is correct, whether the time is controllable, is to be completed in a few months or a year, in general, The planning table allows you to achieve the following goals:

Effective Organization: Time Planner not only allows you to have a good idea of the future, but also to the previous marketing records in the chest.

Visualization: Let team members understand clearly what needs to be done to effectively implement the organization and management of multi-channel marketing campaigns.

Clear responsibilities: Set deadlines, and often read, to ensure that you and the team have a clear concept of the date, reduce unnecessary tedious work.

Here are a few questions and suggestions you need to consider in developing your content planning schedule:

Demand stimulation: Does content inspire interest among target audiences? What is most likely to generate sales leads?

Product & Market: Does the content fully support the market promotion demand of each product line?

PR: Does the content work in conjunction with press releases, official statements, and branding?

Socialization: What can increase user activity in social media and which can form social communication?

Don't promise to complete the task at the fastest time you can expect, and leave some room for yourself to avoid unforeseen contingencies.

If you work with an external team (technology, design, author, etc.), be sure to set a strict schedule in advance and ensure that they are strictly enforced.

Check the schedule every few days to make sure everything is on the right track.

If you are unable to complete the task in due time, let all stakeholders know at the first time.

This article references:

Marketprofs. Content Marketing Guide

Wiki. Content Marketing

CMI. What is content marketing